Science fiction is a powerful tool that can be used to take real world events and themes and extrapolate them into occasionally far fetched worlds and settings. Star Trek took the political themes of the day and made scary alien threats from them, Marvel took the civil rights movement and gave us the X-men. Wynter, from the new and upcoming publisher New World Comics, takes the online world of today and mixes in a little teenage angst for good measure.

For those of us old enough to remember when the internet was new, the constantly connected world of today is something of a contrast to the way things used to be. Arguments over whether that actor or another was in a film used to inspire debates and conversations on the subject where now it’s a quick visit to IMDB on someone’s smartphone and the facts are laid out. Before a deep thought or fantastic idea could inspire your thought processes and encourage you further where now, however, a quick google search is all it takes to remind you that thousands of other people have had that exact same thought, idea, concept and you’re not the unique snowflake you thought you were. I daren’t imagine what it must be like to be a young person growing up in this always-online world… but what about further down the line? What about when there aren’t just billions of humans but billions of billions. Enough so that every possible viable permeation of human DNA has been born into hundreds of thousands of times before or after your birth. Where all these people are so interconnected that every thought and action is logged and statistically analysed. There are no original thoughts left to have and it’s all on record for you to see how special you’re not.

That’s the world of Liz Winter, and like everyone else she is no one special. The first few pages of this opening issue are devoted to telling the reader exactly why she’s no one special. Every thought she has gets a running narration on how many times it’s been had before, and how even her responses have been experienced and felt before. It’s Twitter if Twitter had an evil Mr Clippy pop up on screen and say, “I see you’re trying to tweet about the existential angst of teenage life, 12 million people have expressed the same thought in the last month, would you like to see their tweets?” If that all seems a little dark then that’s because it is, but fortunately a snappy pace and decent writing helps keep things from slipping too far into darkness. It’s a sardonic sense of humour that fits the character and story well.

If the dialogue is perfectly paced then the same can’t really be said about the issue as a whole. A lot of time is spent telling us about her perspective on the universe and then things go to hell remarkably quickly. “Everything’s a Haze” remarks Liz and she could be speaking for the audience. Fortunately the last two pages pick things back up and leave the reader ready and eager to go on.

In addition to the remarkably high calibre of writing, the artwork is really good too, and not just good for an indie title. It’s a painted art style which, while it may not suit the tastes of many comic book readers, does render the universe of Wynter in interesting and sometimes abstract brushstrokes. It’s not all perfect, though. It seems that whatever future we find ourselves in, teenage rebels will shave half their head and use it as a canvas for geometric tattoos, for example - it’s fine just painfully generic. Then there are the borderline likeness-infringing examples of reference models that place Judge Judy in the role of an actual future-judge and, so it would seem, David Tennant as a pharmaceutical salesman. Small touches that can potentially pull the reader out of an otherwise excellently realised world.

While not without its flaws, Wynter is an engaging and enjoyable read that gets a well deserved score of four ear-rings in one ear. If you want to read it for yourself you can do so for free by following New World Comics on twitter to find out how to get the first issue emailed to you, and issues two and three can be found on Comixology.

Published By: Dark Horse Comics

Release Date: November 6th 2013

For a very simplified tower-defense game Plants vs Zombies has been an epic success. One game made it to pretty much every platform under the sun and people were happy to buy it over and over again. Plants vs Zombies 2 has recently been released on iOS but fortunately I'm not reviewing that here so you're saved my ranting diatribe on the curse of fremium and the consumable approach to in-app purchases. Instead I'm looking at a Plants vs Zombies comic book.

Plants vs Zombies: Lawnmageddon is a hardcover book that collects the previously digital exclusive comics that finished a six issue run in August.

Aside from the simple-but-adicting gameplay, the original game had a wonderfully quirky sense of humour as well as a fun cartoony art style. It was not, however, well known for an intricate plot, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the world translated over to comic book form.

Although the game this is based on appealed to a wide range of age groups it should be said that this is very much a children's comic. That's not a bad thing, of course, but it's worth noting that the writing feels like a comic based on a saturday morning cartoon series. The puns come thick and fast and while more hit than miss you can usually be sure that if you laugh at something the exact same joke will be re-used a little later. Like the game, we open with an attack of zombies and are soon introduced to the two main characters, Nate and Patrice. I'm still not entirely sure why Patrice was in Nate's treehouse but the two meet and zombies are out for brains. Fortunately Patrice has a crazy uncle who might be able to help.

Crazy Dave, the only on screen human from the game, is shoehorned into the comic as the creator of the plant army. While it's nice to see him, it is a little weird how his speech can go from nonsensical, “urgs,” and, “args,” to coherent exposition and back again for no reason at all.

The 82 pages do fly by at a quick pace but this could also be because there's really not a lot of story here and what there is feels a little incoherent; it not only feels like a collection of individual issues but also like each issue was written by someone new and they only had a brief description of the story so far. A major motivating plot element from early on seems to be forgotten half way through and the resolution is not only incredibly convenient but also a little too abrupt.

The artwork throughout is pretty good. The zombies look like they've walked out of the game and the living humans look like they're visiting from a 90's cartoon. I was a little distracted by the fact that the two children seem to be based on Ben and Gwen Tennison from the Ben 10 cartoon and given their personalities I don't think this was entirely accidental.

As with so many things to do with Plants vz Zombies it would be easy to dismiss this as a cynical and lazy cash-grab and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to do so. But there is enough humour here to entertain younger fans of the game and it does have a certain charm that makes me think of Halloween specials. If it weren't for the fact that it comes out a week after Halloween I would say this would be a perfect seasonal read. The digital comics are still available, though, so perhaps it would be better to turn down the lights and give those a read instead. I give it three and a half cartoon zombies (and for those of you who are curious, it's the left half).

Latest & Greatest

Fresh Tweets